361 Adventures Unbridled Series #2 The Frog 12hr – A lucky day with some paddling

The past weekend was the stage #2 of the unbridled series organized by our friends Shawn and Dallas from 361 Adventures. A 12hr race at the big lake of Green River State Park in Kentucky nearby Campbellsville trail town. For once we decided to stay the all weekend and having my wife Vivian and friends joining us at the end of the race to enjoy the after race all together. This is the first race with our new racing kits from our sponsor Moziatex sport wear who created a great design with top quality technical fabrics.

Check-in at 7am to get the 2 pre-plotted maps showing the big picture of the day…tons of paddling. Easy staging and race instruction for this one, open style with free choice of order and way to get all the CPs. All gears staged at the start/finish area and 2 mandatory TAs on both extremity of the lac, we guessed to be sure everyone will enjoy hours of paddling.

At 9am racers were set free, we decided with Marc to go to the northern part of the lac first as the orienteering and terrain were more challenging so better be done fresh and not too warm. The first 5 Cps went pretty fast and cleared in less than 1hr30 with a pretty good pace on the canoe. Only issue so far was my canoe seat getting off the holding rails and putting me almost on the bottom of the canoe making the paddling not efficient. Several attempts to fix it turned to be unlucky.

First mistake looking for CP#8 for which a lack of focus on the map made us jumped in the wrong re-entrant. A bit of time lost but we figured out the mistake and went to collect CP#8 running before jumping back on the boat.

CP#9 will be what we will call the lucky factor of the day….First we finally found a log big enough to work a permanent fix to the canoe seat. Then arriving to the CP after looking around missing a re-entrant split, Marc looked at me with a weird face showing that our punch card went off of the hanger we were using. Two solutions at that time, paddling back to the start to get another punch card and re-doing all the race or looking the path we took from the canoe to CP#9 trying to find it. Slow back and fork, up and down the re-entrant, nothing!!! We finally tried to re-do the bushwhack we did before finding CP#9 the first time…and then the magic happened, when we were giving up I heard Marc yelling “It’s here, I got it”. Unbelievable, in the most unlikely spot to comeback, the punch card was laying on the ground and we were now back in the race!!!! Basically switching from almost giving up to a feeling of nothing can happen to us today we jumped back in racing mode pushing the pace to head back to the canoe.

Good navigation and pace to the first mandatory TA and CP#11 and we started to head back south collecting CPs on the shore on our way back. With the time spend on the mistake at CP#8 and on the punch card, it became clear that we won’t probably have time to do much biking at the end of the race and decided to stop at the staging area to put all the drinks we had from the buckets to the canoe to be sure to finish with enough water.

The heat or the time spent on the water (I’m clearly not a boating person) put me in a pretty bad down time. As always Marc as the perfect teammate keep me in the race, moving to our buckets where after 10 minutes  and a “warm” coke we went back up in the race.

Heading now south, we landed in a creek to collect CP#14, 15 and 16 and then canoed to the 2nd mandatory CPs where we spent a bit of time looking for the flag as I had a hard time matching the map with the terrain. Well we discussed with some half-drunk swimmer enjoying the day.  Once found, we cleared CP#17, 18, 19 and 20 jogging/running for most of the time.

Decision was made to drop CP#34 which was too far out south. After clearing #32 and #33, we were on our way back to the finish with 1h30min to go. That was enough time to add CPs that were on or near the bike trail but also accessible by the water. Looking at the map after race clearly made all those CPs better from the water, another call that I would put on the luck of the day. This decision was probably a result changer for the end of the race, and after a last push to CP#25 with a fun sprint back to the canoe and an all-out paddling, we finished the race after 11hr53 collecting 30 Cps out of the 36.

At our surprise, we finished  1st in 2-4male division and 2nd overall  just one CP behind Team Kuat, and 1 CP ahead our friends of Topo Adventure, and realized that the race went rough for all the teams.

In resume, that was a challenging day with lot of paddling and one of those day where the race mood and strategy changed several times. Finish could have been better but certainly worst with the punch card adventure and we still feel really lucky to go back in the race and not DNF.

Thank you to all the volunteers who helped to set-up the course and created a great challenging race and to 361 Adventure to keep putting great events in the area.

Next for us, will be Topo East fork Challenge 12hr (solo or 2 Male team), then National Co-Ed with Brooke and the last stage of the 361 unbridled series, the classic “The Fig” in the Red river gorge area.

#roadtousara #moziatexbikewear #moziatex #teammoziatex #TJ79 #jovent79 #triatlojovent79